Just when you think everything’s fine, disaster strikes! Your customer cancels. And to make matters worse, they canceled without saying a word.

“Why did my customer cancel?”

That’s the most frustrating and perplexing question you’ll ever face as a business.

And it’s a question you’ll ask a lot. Aside from a few squeaky wheels, the vast majority of the customers who leave won’t tell you why. According to this study, a whopping 96% of customers don’t offer feedback and 91% will simply leave without giving you a chance to make it right.

You see, getting customers is great, but keeping customers is even greater. It’s actually 5 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to keep a current one. And if you put all of your effort into getting new customers, but don’t figure out what’s causing your current customers to leave, you’ll soon be saying “goodbye” to the new customers, too.

So, the more you can reduce churn (the loss of customers), the better.

Let’s talk about the most common causes for churn, and how to prevent this from happening to your business.

6 Reasons Customers Churn (Without Saying a Word)

1. Your Service Is Not a Great Fit

Not sure who your ideal customer is? That will increase churn. Here’s how:

Your service won’t appeal to every person on earth. Some people won’t have a use for it, other people won’t understand it, and then there will be a few who hate your guts without a logical reason. It’s just part of the game.

But your mission is to create a service for a specific group of people and then find that group of people.

If you waste your time wooing the wrong audience, you’ll eventually lose them in the end. They’ll realize that your service doesn’t perfectly answer their problem, and they’ll move on to the next.

Solution:

Be very clear about who your ideal customer is and then set a pathway to success for that customer. Don’t reach out to people who may not benefit from your service. Don’t advertise by casting a wide net. Focus your marketing efforts on an incredibly targeted demographic (which may be only a few thousand leads or less to begin with).

As you learn more about your customers and how your service fits their needs, you may benefit from zooming out and targeting a larger group.

2. The Customer Feels Lost

Ever signed up to try a service and felt like you had no clue what to do next? Your customer may be experiencing that same nightmare with your service. Yikes.

When customers feel lost, it’s often due to a lack of onboarding.

Onboarding is about taking your customer from signup to success. We’ll define success as the place where your customer can see the demonstrated value of your service. If they can get to this initial (and very important) milestone, they’ll be more likely to stick with your service.

So it’s important that you create an easy-to-follow map that takes the customer from signup to their first milestone of success with your service.

Sometimes, there are warning signs before a customer churns.

An increase in support tickets is a telltale sign that customers don’t feel confident in using your service. It could also indicate that there are gaps in your design that you need to address.

Although you understand your service in and out, your customer may not. When the customer doesn’t understand how to use the service, you’ll likely see a dip in usage and engagement before they eventually churn.

Solution:

Create a thorough onboarding program for your customers so they understand exactly how to use the service. A good idea is to create a video tutorial series to appeal to visual learners. Look for ways to proactively educate your customer so that they don’t feel lost.

Another way to avoid churn is to monitor usage and behavior. Then, set up emails to send in response to certain behavioral triggers or when a user goes below a desired usage level (i.e. not using after a specific amount of days, or accessing the knowledge base).

3. Bad Customer Service

Many businesses focus so much on customer acquisition that they neglect customer retention. That’s a deadly mistake.

Studies show that bad customer service is the number one reason why customers stop doing business with a particular company.

You need to commit yourself to ongoing customer care.

Customer service extends beyond a friendly, smiling face– it’s also the following:

Proactively providing solutions that help the customer win

Empathizing with the customer and not getting defensive

Offering quick responses to customer requests

So, how do you make this actionable?

Solution:

Invest in a knowledgeable team that you can trust. Give them autonomy and authority to make decisions quickly without getting stuck in your company’s bureaucracy. Look for potential pitfalls and proactively create solutions that steer the customer in the right direction.

Also, don’t just do it in the background. Let customers know that you’re helping them. For example, offer suggestions on ways they can take better advantage of your service (i.e. “Hey, I noticed you using X, I think you could benefit from doing Y and Z.”).

4. The Price is Wrong

Pricing is tricky. On one hand, you don’t want to undervalue your service and practically give it away. On the other hand, you don’t want to price yourself out of the market.

It may sound counter-intuitive, but it’s proven that customers place a higher value on more expensive services and service.

Solution:

Don’t slash your prices in order to compete with others. That’s a race to the bottom and no one wins.

Instead, offer a value-based pricing model. A popular model in the SaaS space is to go with a tiered pricing solution. Do choose your tiers wisely and include sticky features on all tiers.

What makes a feature sticky?

A sticky features is one that becomes an essential part of your customer’s workflow. Customers will continue to pay for your service because they can’t easily function without it.

5. You’ve Lost Contact

Don’t lose sight of your customers. It may seem like everything is going well, but you still need to check up on them every now and then.

Take their temperature. Are they still excited about your service?

Encourage them to use your service. When’s the last time they used your service?

Solution:

The easiest way to stay in contact with your customers is to create an active email marketing strategy. Write a series of emails and then send them out automatically based on the customer’s journey or behavior.

For example if the customer writes in to support, it makes sense to send a follow up email within 24 hours. Another example is to send an email to mark their one year anniversary with your service along with a thoughtful gift or discount.

Other ideas include:

Highlighting advanced ways to use your service

Asking for feedback

Encouraging referrals

Showcasing how other customers use your service

6. You’re Not Standing Out From Your Competitors

If you’re in a popular industry, you’ve got competitors. But that’s not a bad thing. It simply means that there’s a need for your service.

However, you can’t afford to be to similar to your competitors. If you are, you’ll risk losing your customers to a strikingly similar service.

There is such a thing as “competitor-created” churn. Some customers will leave you because they can score a better price from your competitor “for the same service”.

Don’t let this happen to you.

Solution:

Focus on your unique value proposition. What is it?

Stellar customer service?

A huge body of resources?

Popularity?

Out-of-this-world onboarding?

Whatever it is that sets you apart from your competitors, make sure that your customers know about it. Make it part of your marketing, and showcase it in your nurturing.

For example, if your unique value proposition is that your service is popular, share testimonials or case studies from others who have found success using your service.

Another example, let’s say your unique value proposition is that you have a huge body of resources. Make sure that you’re emailing your customers with links to relevant resources that correspond to where they are on their customer journey.

Final Thoughts

Before you go, make sure that you do this:

Get ahead of customer churn by surveying your current customers. Take a pulse for the following:

Overall customer satisfaction (On a scale of 1 – 10, how satisfied are you with our service?)

Proper fit (On a scale of 1 – 10, how does our service help you achieve your desired results?)

Continued success with the service (How often have you used our service in the last 30 days? 1-5 times, 6-10 times, 11+, Haven’t Used)

Whether they’d recommend you to friends / colleagues (On a scale of 1 – 10, how likely are you to recommend our service?)

These are just a few of the questions you can ask your current customers. While not everyone will respond, those who do will provide valuable insight into how well your service is resonating with your customers.

Don’t forget to download this list of actionable strategies to stop customers from churning.

Building a SaaS product means focusing on your customers. You want to build and operate the product they are willing to pay for. To do it right, you need as much data from the customer as possible in order to prevent churn.

Analytics and usage data are helpful, but you need a better way to gauge customer sentiment. Do they like the product? In what ways can it better? Would they recommend it someone else? Sometimes the best way to determine how someone is feeling is to ask them.

Now, you can’t ask every customer about their experience. If you’re a low-touch SaaS with thousands of customers, you would need an expensive team making phone calls. But you can still capture their feedback with customer surveys.

Customer surveys turn qualitative data into quantitative data so you can evaluate customer sentiment at scale. They also help you identify complaints if customers aren’t willing to speak up on their own. You can use them in basically three places.

Embedded on a web page. You would send customers a link to this page.

Email-based. You would send an automated email based on some trigger with a single question. Clicking a response would record their answer on your end.

On-site or in-app. A pop-up, overlay or slide-out widget would appear as the user uses the product. These collect the highest response rates.

Once you decide to create a customer survey, you need some tips to create one.

9 Tips for Creating Effective Customer Surveys

1. Keep the survey as short as possible

When you ask a customer to fill out a survey, you’re asking them to give you their time and energy. If they look at a 30 question form, they may decide they don’t want to spend 15 minutes of their life helping you out.

Carve your surveys down to the bare essentials. Keep your questions clear and concise. Eliminate extra phrasing and words. Simple changes like shortening “What’s your age?” to “Age” can improve the likelihood that more people will fill it out.

Cut out any questions that don’t serve your purpose. For instance, if the goal of your survey is to determine if your customers would recommend your product to a friend, don’t ask them how much they like a particular feature. If it’s not relevant, don’t ask. That includes personal information like names and email addresses.

2. Ask one question at a time

Users can feel bombarded, rushed and overwhelmed by a full page of questions. To the user, it becomes more of an interrogation than a survey.

Make their experience more comfortable by displaying one question at a time. This cuts out the distractions so they can focus on giving quality answers. It’s also a clever way to hide the length of your form. People are more likely to continue when the survey if they’ve already committed some time to it.

3. Make use of closed-ended questions

Studies show that survey takers prefer closed-ended questions, probably because they’re easy. Wherever possible, supply answer choices for the user like yes/no, true/false, or agree/disagree. Questions that let you select between one and ten are also closed-ended. They work well at the beginning of your survey because they get the user to jump in quickly and build momentum so they are more likely to finish.

4. Make your open-ended questions smart

Even though people prefer closed-ended questions, you shouldn’t be afraid to ask an open-ended question if it supports your survey’s purpose. Your most insightful feedback will come this way.

Like everything else on your survey, keep your open-ended questions short and clear. Don’t ask them to read a paragraph. If you can, precede your open-ended question with a closed-ended question, similar to how Net Promoter Score questions are arranged:

“How likely are you to recommend our product to a friend? Select 1-10.”

“Please explain why you feel that way.”

5. Reward the submitter

To entice your users to complete the survey, sometimes you have to pay them. Generally speaking, incentives work well to capture customer feedback. Survey Monkey found that offering an incentive can increase response rate by 5% to 20%.

Deciding what you’ll give to your users will depend on your product and your customer. Do they value discounts? Free items? Free content? Upgraded product features? Make sure that whatever you give away is financially bearable so you aren’t burdened by a high response rate.

Some survey makers fear that incentivizing survey takers reduces the quality of the results. Wouldn’t some people just click through the survey to reach the prize at the end? There’s plenty of evidence to show that this isn’t the case.

6. Brand your survey

If a complete stranger asked you a question, how likely would you be to respond? Even if you bothered, you would rush your response to get out of the situation. People are naturally suspicious of things they aren’t familiar with.

If you use a third-party tool to create and/or deliver your survey, make sure to use whatever features are available to incorporate your own branding. If the tool lacks brand features, choose a new tool.

7. Standardize your rating system

You want the user to flow through your survey quickly so they don’t have a poor experience. You also want them to submit quality answers. Neither of those can happen if you use inconsistent rating systems.

If you use a 1-5 most-to-least important format, stick to it so your user doesn’t have to readjust to new systems with each question. If you change the rules, there’s a chance the user won’t notice. They could be answering “strongly agree” when they mean something is “least important” because they didn’t adapt to the new format, which invalidates your data.

8. Make the survey accessible to mobile users

It’s no secret that many people are accessing online tools and apps via mobile devices.

Depending on your product, you may notice this is the case for a majority of users. You could limit your surveys to people who use your website on their desktop or laptop, but that wouldn’t give you a representative sample of your customer base.

Design your survey around the customer’s needs and preferences. Make it accessible to their devices and usage times. Don’t interrupt them in-app while they’re using your video conferencing tool – that would be disruptive. Email it instead.

9. Add conditional customization

Let’s say you’re taking a survey and a question asks “Do you use our product for business or pleasure?” You select “for pleasure,” but the next question asks “How many people in your company use our product?”

Wait a minute… That second question doesn’t apply based on the answer to the first question. It’s just not relevant anymore. This situation would be even worse if the second question was required to move on. You would abandon the survey (and rightfully so).

The best survey feature tools allow you to hide or show upcoming questions based on responses to previous questions.

Final thoughts

Customer surveys are only effective if you make them high-quality. Don’t rush through one in 15 minutes. Once you’ve put it together, share it with a small group of people first and get their feedback before you blast it out to your subscribers or users.

]]>How Better Customer Data Tracking Is Helping SaaS Winhttp://blog.stunning.co/how-better-customer-data-tracking-is-helping-saas-win/
Mon, 19 Dec 2016 12:00:12 +0000http://blog.stunning.co/?p=1114SaaS who know which data to pay attention to and how to use it are getting ahead. Here’s how.

Every SaaS has the information available to improve what they’re doing from the customer’s perspective, but are you really unlocking this potential?

Tracking and analysing customer data is one way Saas can get the information required to adjust, improve or even pivot to achieve better growth and retention rates. SaaS who are more successful tend to be those who are better at using customer data to their advantage.

How Better Customer Data Tracking Is Helping SaaS Win

How can you make better use of your customer data? We’ve got a few thoughts based on what we’ve seen working successfully for SaaS:

Know Your Current Numbers

We’ve all heard the saying “that what gets measured, gets managed” and that’s the point of knowing where your current numbers are at first.

You should know your growth rates, churn rates and retention rates so that you can attribute any improvements correctly to actions you have taken based on your data.

The number that most owners and investors are particularly interested in is churn. How many customers were signed up and how many of those left? What were their reasons for leaving? If you don’t have a good grasp on why people are leaving, putting a mechanism in place to record this is a good start.

Understand Critical Behaviors

Each SaaS will be different in terms of the customer behaviors which are considered critical indicators for retention. Your starting point is understanding what those are for your SaaS. This could be defined as the list of actions or behaviors a customer must take to increase the chances that they will stay with you.

Typical items might include:

Completion of your onboarding process. Customers who complete onboarding are more likely to renew than those who don’t.

Weekly or monthly usage statistics. This will be a variable depending on the SaaS, but you will usually find a usage pattern which is indicative of those who stay compared to those who leave.

Critical tasks. Which tasks within the app are critical for those who stay? For example, are they leveraging your platform analytics?

Usage rates of any new functionality.

Engagement with email or other forms of communication.

Create Defined Processes

Any data you gather is really only as good as the process you have for ensuring accuracy and actually taking action on it. Electronic data gathering and predictive analytics give us several advantages now which weren’t so easy to come by in the past.

Have in place a clearly defined process for data gathering and reporting so that you’re not essentially just playing with numbers. SaaS with larger teams will probably allocate this task to customer success or even marketing so that they have the opportunity to drill down on any churn indicators and act through customer segmentation and better personalization of messaging.

An overall aim of your process is to gather data relevant to those critical metrics and actions you’ve already identified so that you can make a plan of action to improve them, then monitor the results after that plan has been enacted.

Remember Non-Electronic Contact

It’s relatively easy to set up processes for gathering data on in-app and electronic communications, however you need to remember those non-electronic communications which can provide valuable added information.

For example, what if you’re dealing with a customer over the phone or face to face? How do you incorporate that feedback into a process? Sometimes it may be the case that customers are complaining, reporting an issue or even cancelling over the phone and you could miss valuable, actionable information if you don’t have a way to record it.

The bottom line is that for the sake of accuracy, you need to have a process in place to record all customer interactions. If you do so, you can then watch for any patterns that emerge between your verbal feedback and the actions you are able to record electronically. Is there an effect on usage statistics or a clear correlation leading to churn?

What is the bigger picture of overall customer health? How do all the moving parts affect engagement, retention and upsells?

Qualitative Data Matters

Kissmetrics examined different types of data and had this to say: “Qualitative data connects you with your visitors and target customers. You can learn why they do what they do…”

Qualitative data steps in because the quantitative metrics you gather, such as app usage statistics, don’t tell you the full picture. They might tell you the what, but they sure don’t tell you the why.

You need to know more about the emotions behind customer decisions, why did they check you out in the first place, or take any action with you? You need a broader picture so that your own potential biases don’t get in the way of decision making.

That qualitative data comes from those non-electronic interactions. It comes from feedback in the form of emails or surveys and any other format where a customer is able to provide something that is raw and in their own words. (You could even use a tool such as Retained which helps to gather feedback on customer sentiment).

Data for the Win

Of course, the key to really using customer data successfully lies in what you do with it. How does it tie back to key goals, such as improving satisfaction and retention rates?

Kissmetrics recommend a starting point with qualitative data; using it to enhance what you offer and increase conversions through:

Product / Market Fit

User Experience / User Interface

New Features

The second two are about better user engagement and retention too, particularly if they’re rooted in how the user really feels and experiences your product. It’s not always easy to put yourself in the customer’s shoes, and, as mentioned, without actual qualitative data, you risk paying too much attention to your own biases.

Google’s Marissa Mayer worked this out quickly and deliberately chose to use a dial-up connection in order to experience and really feel what many of Google’s users did. (Ugh, no word on how many laptops were harmed during this experiment!). Her experience along with user feedback formed a big part of the reason Google decided to put a lot of focus on page speed with their products.

We would add to those three and say that collecting good qualitative data will help you to better define customer success for your SaaS and have it underpin those other three suggestions. You’ve got to know your customer beyond the actions you see them take and understand what really appeals to them on a personal level.

Final Thoughts

Customer data tracking is imperative for SaaS who want a deeper understanding of their vital numbers and what they can be doing to improve them.

It starts with knowing what your goals and core metrics need to be, along with any critical indicators which contribute to them.

Many of these will be quantitative measures which are relatively simple to track using electronic means, however these only provide you with part of the picture. A fuller view comes when you record qualitative data too and can understand your customer’s “why.”

Use your data to take action to improve user experience overall, and you can improve your vital numbers such as retention and churn.

]]>Customer Education 101: How to Understand Them and Make Them Understand Youhttp://blog.stunning.co/customer-education-101-how-to-understand-them-and-make-them-understand-you/
Mon, 24 Oct 2016 11:00:46 +0000http://blog.stunning.co/?p=1066Have you created an education program which caters to customer needs? Here’s how you can help customers to understand you.

What Are Your Goals?

Before embarking on any kind of customer education program, you should be clear on exactly what the business needs to get out of it. Bill Cushard points out that you might have many goals to pursue education-wise, so the question to ask is:

“What can customer education do to help drive the goals that the business cares about most?”

For example, do you want to:

Increase the number of qualified leads you have?

Reduce your churn rate?

Get more customer upgrades?

Reduce support tickets?

Increase product usage?

Having your business goals in mind before kicking off any education initiatives will help to ensure that you stay focused on those items which are really important for achieving those goals. Most SaaS have limited resources when it comes to budget or bandwidth for producing and promoting educational resources, so keep them targeted.

Know Your Customer

In order to produce more effective resources, you really need to have a good grasp of who your ideal customer is first. This is so that you’re able to both attract the right customers in the first place, and provide them with the educational resources which will best suit them.

First of all, have you clearly defined the problem/s your SaaS is solving? Your ideal client identifies themselves as having that problem and it is annoying enough to them that they will pay for a good solution.

Once you’re clear on the problem or problems you solve, first look at the broader categories of businesses or individuals who have this problem, then narrow them down to specifics. For example, could your target customer be the CMO of an enterprise? A sales representative of a SaaS? A solopreneur?

If you want to be even more targeted, you can go even deeper and determine the exact industry they are in. How educated are they? How pressed for time? Basically, the more details you can build into a customer profile, the better it will help you devise the right education strategies. It will also save you from developing redundant strategies. A CEO probably doesn’t want to sit through 30 minute webinars, for example.

Learning Styles

Identifying the ideal customer who will pay for your solution to their problem is a great first step in helping you understand your customers, now you need to work on getting them to understand you.

Many SaaS make the mistake of thinking that if they blast out a list of features, those will be enough to draw in those ideal clients, but you’ll find that many customers don’t really understand those features. In fact, they may not even care. What they do care about is that you’re solving their problem in a meaningful way.

This is where your education program comes in. No matter what segment of your sales funnel you’re aiming at or which goals you are looking to achieve, you will find that you encounter—and need to cater for—different learning styles.

Visual – Just as it sounds, this person prefers diagrams, pictures, maps and presentations.

Auditory – Learns best through listening and speaking.

Kinesthetic – “Hands on” learners. Like to have tactile representations of information.

Read and write – This group learns best through words.

Do you see what we mean? If you were to decide that all learning will be done via an email course, you’ve probably just completely lost your auditory and kinesthetic learners in terms of actually completing your education program, possibly your visual learners too. Your “read and write” learners will however be happy.

Buyer Modality

“Buyer modality” is another consideration to be aware of which can go hand-in-hand with how you cater to learning styles in your customer education. After all, your customer is not just a learner, they are (hopefully!) a buyer. This theory says that there are four fundamental personality types or “modalities” among your buyers.

Those modalities are plotted on a chart with speed preference (fast vs. slow) on one axis and preference for logic vs. emotion on the other.

Your competitive buyer will value smart, logical decisions which give them a clear competitive advantage. The methodical buyer is an analyst, drawn to data and processes. Spontaneous buyers are more likely to impulse-buy based on the thrill of a quick purchase and the simplicity of doing so. Lastly, humanistic buyers are interested in the “human” side, the real-life case studies and the affirmation that others like them are using your solution for the same problem.

When you add in modality as a factor, you start to see that a good education program will not only cater to multiple learning styles, but will understand and deliver for buyer modalities, highlighting those things which each prefer.

Borrow Ideas from Others

There are companies out there (SaaS or otherwise) doing a great job of customer education and people are taking notice. For example, AirBnB puts out a lot of educational material for hosts, helping them to run a better business, get better reviews or just ensure the safety of their property.

Canva offers a quick onboarding video to new users, but then has a great library of design tips and tutorials in the form of their Design School. To make things even easier, users can browse Design School by category and cut through anything they don’t need.

Dropbox has a file already created for you when you join which teaches you how to use it. They engage users further by offering rewards for taking their tour.

Get Customer Feedback

Never overlook the “horse’s mouth” as a good source for ideas on improving your customer education program. Survey your customers or even call some of them and ask how they find your educational resources and whether they could suggest any improvements.

Besides asking, put steps in place to measure the effectiveness of your education programs. Keep metrics on how many customers go through your resources and which seem to be the most popular.

How can you cater learning resources to different styles? Check out our free guide:

Final Thoughts

Developing a quality education program for your customers is an important part of ensuring that you retain more of them. Part of that is understanding them so that you can help them to understand what you are about.

Know exactly what problem you are solving and who needs that problem solved enough to pay for it. Develop a profile of that ideal customer so that you understand their needs and what they will expect from your educational resources.

Recognize that there are different learning preferences as well as buyer modalities which impact how effective your resources will be. It is always a good idea to create different types of resources which will meet these varying needs.

Lastly, keep a finger on the pulse of what’s working by measuring and gathering feedback. Actionable feedback will guide better resources and boosted customer engagement.

In the SaaS business, engaging early with your customers is mission-critical for delivering the best possible experiences and smoothing their way to stay onboard with you.

As Lincoln Murphy often says; “the seeds of churn are planted early.” This means that everything you do from the time the customer first makes contact with you is weighting the scale either one way or the other — to stay? Or to go?

Generally speaking, your customers are looking for a good solution to their problem and preferably, they want that solution to be as simple as possible. For every hurdle you have, you will lose at least someone who decides that it’s not worth the hassle.

For this reason, it’s important to look at strategies for smoothing out the onboarding process and ensuring customers are enthusiastic about staying with you. Anyone who feels their experience was “meh” is probably one click away from cancelling.

SaaS need to take a serious look at every touchpoint their prospects and clients have, starting with that first contact…

First Impressions

Did you know that people judge a website in just fifty milliseconds from arriving on it? Yep, that’s how much time you have to create a first impression!

While UX and UI considerations come into the picture, most SaaS now seem to be doing fairly well with the idea of clean, simple website design. (If not, it’s time for yours to sort that out!).

One area for which many SaaS are not doing so great is in explaining well upfront what they are about and who they are for. If you can’t explain to me early on in concise language what it is you do, while I might be curious enough to continue, find out more and sign up for a trial, the impression I already have is that you’re perhaps a bit complicated or a bit tenuous over your concept. You don’t want the overall view of your customer to be colored by that kind of impression.

That is not to say that you should try to cram everything into one sentence for the sake of brevity. Many SaaS are much more complicated than that when it comes to explaining what they are about, so why not use a few bullet points instead? Focus on the pain points that you solve first, go into detail later.

Setting the Right Expectations

This is another thing which is critical to get right in those early stages. No one likes to enter into a SaaS product thinking it’s the answer to their problems, only to find that it doesn’t quite look like the impression that was given.

Benjamin Brandall discussed this in a post for Process St as the “disconnect between product and packaging.” This is where the marketing material isn’t a true reflection of the in-app experience, another reason why SaaS might experience churn in the early stages after sign up. How annoyed would you be if you had an experience like the image below?

The lesson is that setting your SaaS (and your customers) up for success begins with ensuring you are creating the right first impressions. Don’t let customers be fooled by unrealistic, glossy packaging and make sure your copy is clear about what you do and who you do it for.

The Sign-Up Process

This is the logical next-step in customer onboarding; they’ve checked out your website, perhaps some of the content you’ve produced, and they’ve decided to go ahead and sign up for your free trial.

How much friction is involved in your sign-up process?

Brandon Hickie discusses the counter-arguments for gathering more versus less information on sign-up in a post for Open View. The ultimate answer on how much information to ask for relies on how well you know your customers.

Yes, in the eyes of the SaaS more information is better because it allows you to segment and to personalize your messaging, but what sort of customer are you after? Many customers will prefer to test you out and develop a relationship first, before handing over more information about themselves. Though on the other hand, you might be of the view that those who are not willing to take a couple of minutes to fill out a form do not fit into your ideal customer mould.

Of course, you could take the stance of slowly collecting more information over time, but the ultimate lesson here is to understand your target customers very well and create a sign-up process accordingly. If you go for higher friction and your customers tend to be very busy types, you’ve probably created a tiresome impression already.

How can you make the signup process friendlier? Grab our free tips here.

Strategies for Successful SaaS Customer Onboarding

Welcome Emails

Ok, the customer has reached the next step; that point which happens immediately after they’ve gone ahead and signed up. For most SaaS, this next touchpoint is a welcome email (or series of emails).

Lincoln Murphy wrote an informative article on customer onboarding emails where he makes great points; apart from following known email best practices, any SaaS onboarding emails should lead the customer directly to the actions they need to take in order to achieve success or value from your SaaS.

You want your messaging to be crystal clear. That first email should point customers to the first logical activity on the list to complete. There should be a goal for each email you send and a map of the journey which the new customer needs to take. Guide them across that journey through logical sequence in your emails.

Using a single, clear call to action in your emails is also good practice. If you’re inviting them to download your iPhone app, connect with you on Facebook or anything else besides the key in-app action you want them to take, the chances are most will either be confused and do nothing or pick one thing, whether it’s the critical action or not.

High or Low Touch?

The aim of every SaaS is to wow customers, solve a significant problem for them and have them onboard as loyal customers. While this seems simple in theory, in practice there are a number of considerations to bring people to that point.

You can’t just leave the rest of your onboarding process to a few emails and hope for the best; as pointed out by Nate Munger for Salesforce, this would be failing to take into account that your customers represent multiple learning styles.

So cater to different learning styles, but will you go for low or high touch?

Low Touch

When your target customer base is large, it’s simply not possible to personally reach out to all of them, or even a large percentage. So, what happens when your product introduces new ways of doing things which will be a learning curve for users?

Microsoft was a master of low touch onboarding, particularly as demonstrated by their introduction of games to get people used to using a mouse and the mechanisms for how Windows would work. Solitaire and Minesweeper may have caused hours of time-wasting, but they sure were a good way to engage people and have them quickly pick up the skills needed.

Slack provides a great example of today’s low-touch onboarding process. Slackbot helps to guide people through essential tasks and will even chat back when users type in questions.

High Touch

High touch (or as it is often referred to; “concierge onboarding”), looks more closely at each individual customer and treats them according to their specific needs. This might involve measures such as using customer success coaches who personally reach out to clients and make sure they help them to see value from the app.

This type of onboarding is more commonly used in SaaS which have produced a product that is not easily explained and is perhaps of a more high-end or enterprise variety. Where the company is laying out bigger dollars to have the software, it is often an expectation that they will receive more of a concierge service.

The key goal of both low or high touch methods is that the customer understands the product very well and can see how to get value from it. Whichever you choose, you need to clearly be helping the customer solve a problem which brings them to success and making the achievement of that success as easy as possible for them.